Could be, Sarenrae didn't really have other options, and a Rovagug release was imminent and Sarenrae considered that bad or was obligated by other bargains made to prevent the universe's destruction.

Could be, Sarenrae knew that everybody in the doomed city would isekai-theory-of-immortality to somewhere else acceptable, if she smote it in a soul-destroying way, instead of going to an Evil afterlife.

Could be, Sarenrae knew that city would go on generating souls to go to Evil afterlives, until destroyed, and she took the Rovagug issue as an excuse to destroy an Evil city without the Evil gods interfering.

Could be, the angels who were never human don't think in quite the same way about everyone containing a whole world inside them.

Could be, the ancient gods don't have emotional relationships with even the most advanced fancy-headband-wearing 9th-circle wizards, for the same reason Keltham would have trouble falling in love with someone at INT 10.

Could be, the ancient gods just don't feel that way about mortals.

Could be, the thing with Desna and Cayden Cailean is completely true, and she really did love him and not just fuck him.

Could be, Abadar does like mortals and doesn't like Asmodeus; but, Asmodeus not being Zon-Kuthon, Asmodeus is not perfectly inimical to mortals; and Abadar trades with Asmodeus in the gap of that imperfection.

Or it could be that two ancient inhuman gods have a common interest in building cities, because it creates more trade and more tyranny.

...Keltham is about done here, and ready to Teleport back to the Black Dome, if the streets here are no longer safe to wander.

They got her her new trainees very promptly, probably because Keltham is recruiting just as fast in Osirion. She actually hasn't had time to rehearse her speech in front of a mirror, but that's fine, she doesn't need to. 

"Welcome to Project Lawful. The objective of Project Lawful is to use true Asmodeanism, the things Hell is forbidden to teach us, to invent the means to conquer the world. Most of the conquest of the world will be achieved with chemistry, the knowledge of the minute physical details of reality that enables alchemical reactions we didn't previously know how to attain, and with related principles of shareable experimentation. Alchemists conduct plenty of experiments, but alchemy is hardly richer for them; the benefits accrue to the individual, and not to Cheliax, which is their master and which merits the greater share of the benefit from their discovery. Dath ilan figured out how to ensure that experimentation benefits the state and not just the experimenter, and we'll be doing that. 

 In dath ilan, where this chemistry was first discovered, every child is raised from a young age with a grasp of the mathematical foundations of what they do and why. Keltham attempted to teach that to us, out of some kind of conviction that there was where the true secret of dath ilan's wealth and power lay. The mathematical foundations of the universe are certainly interesting, but where they bore fruit was in the areas I have spoken of -- chemistry, and experimental methods for ensuring that Cheliax can prosper by the discoveries of its alchemists. Had we the luxury of all the time in the world, it would fall to us to attempt to coax the other elements of Keltham's teaching to bear fruit.

But we have no such time. Keltham has fled to Osirion, where he will be teaching eager Abadarans all he knows, and warning all the world that Cheliax has cheap spellsilver and knowledge of the principles to invent more from there. The war is coming soon, and if we are unprepared for it we will be annihilated, by the self-righteous forces of Good that loathe any power that does not bow to them. You will not have the luxury of mastering ilanism in a meandering way from all its foundations dath ilan teaches to children; you will master chemistry quickly and cleanly, you will learn the experimental methods, and all the rest of ilanism we will develop as necessary to enable further achievements in industry. The core problem before you is how to make spellsilver cheaper to make, and possible to make without the attention of high level wizards, and how to use alchemy to cause much larger explosions, and to prevent them.

Along the way, some of the tangential bits of ilanism will prove necessary to master, and you'll be trained in them, but we are not trying to do Hell's work. We are trying to defend our lives, our souls, and our homeland, and if Asmodeus wills it we'll learn more about the deep true nature of the world along the way, because we require it for His service."

"So, like, the part where the Queen told us to produce new ilani and scale up manufacturing, we're all going to pretend we haven't heard that?  Because if we did hear the Queen's priorities, what she thinks Cheliax needs next, and then ignored those because they'd be inconvenient, that'd be, you know, impolite.  Just trying to grasp what story we're supposed to be coordinating around, if Abrogail Thrune drops by and asks what we're doing."

Asmodia asks it of Avaricia at a time when only the old members of Project Lawful are present; Asmodia is not doing anything that could be interpreted as overt sabotage of Avaricia while Avaricia still seems to be overtly working for Cheliax.

"I don't think that dath ilan arrived in their present state, in the first place, by sitting in their libraries contemplating the nature of reason. They tried to build things. They developed ilanism in the course of trying to achieve things. Having done so, they distilled it into some form you could teach children, but we don't have the starting point they distilled from, and we don't have much time, so it's idiocy, to try to do this in the manner that the fully developed dath ilani Civilization did it. Instead, we'll have to do it the way they invented it in the first place, which is in the course of trying to solve real problems. 

Should Her Imperial Majestrix stop by to see what progress we're making, it is my hope to report to her that we've made progress both on chemistry and on identification of which elements of ilanism are necessary first, which in their absence hold people back in useful invention and industry, and which come much later or are, perhaps, a distraction dath ilan installed for some reason other than their producing high-achieving people. I anticipate being able to make such a report despite the fact that the bulk of Project resources are being expended by you on nothing in particular, a decision which I would not dare to presume is the product of deliberate treason except for how you keep saying that you're a traitor and want us to lose."

Asmodia restrains the impulse to tell Avaricia everything she's actually doing wrong, like, if Avaricia was actually trying that, she should be giving her new minions freer rein, telling them to write down in advance how they planned to think about things methodologically, and seeing which of them if any produced results that way.  Avaricia has, in fact, grasped the idea of writing down possible experiments and predictions, and letting her underlings propose those; to Asmodia's observation she hasn't taken it to the meta-level.

But this, indeed, Asmodia does not say.  Asmodia does not, in fact, want Cheliax to win, but Asmodia suspects that part is not mainly down to her own choices, at this point.  However, Asmodia definitely doesn't want Avaricia to win.

"Yep, I want Cheliax to lose, but I also know that it's in my best interests to be able to honestly testify that I did my best work at any point up until Keltham comes back for us.  And the fact that I'm being honest with myself about that, lets me figure out what actually is in Cheliax's interests.  That's why Sevar prefers it that way.  Avaricia's thoughts twist and turn until whatever's best for herself is sincerely believed by her to be what's best for Cheliax.  She can't choose not to betray Cheliax and her superiors; she doesn't have an internal option that looks like that, because she doesn't have internal labels on the traitorous parts."

"Hence the saying:  Better a bad slave than a muddled one."

"Saying it doesn't make it a saying. And declaring that you're honest with yourself doesn't make you so. I could keep going in this vein; you have a habit of declaring things and then pretending they're true. But if they are, then I suppose all the valuable insights will come out of your team, and your methods adopted more widely; and if, as I suspect, you're deluding yourself and blowing hot air and trying to run an organization in such a disorganized fashion it wouldn't work even among ilani, well, then it'll be good someone tried doing something different from that."

"Asserting lots of things with higher Splendour doesn't make them true either, even if you point to the other person dramatically and declare 'declaring things doesn't make them true' in every other sentence.  It's a cutting accusation you can level just as easily at true declarations as false declarations, making it no evidence under the Law of Probability, all Splendour and no Validity.  For me to argue in such a way, of course, would be betraying Cheliax by throwing 'entropy' and random noise into our deliberations.  As a bad slave, rather than a muddled one, I have the option of choosing not to do that, you see."

"Well, just keep in mind, neither the Most High nor the Queen will be fooled by the part where you tackled a lot of easy problems using methodology that Keltham already explained to you and afterwards made out like you're a genius.  Though I suppose all that Splendour has to be good for something, like selling whatever easy results you get as being incredibly difficult ones.  Yes yes, my declaring this indeed does not make it so; nor will whatever you declare in response be true only because you say it."

Asmodia has a hidden card here; she does not know any details of the Shadow Project already working to develop reserved Chelish advantages, but Asmodia knows that it exists.  Whatever Avaricia claims to be the results of her own genius and methods will be inevitably surprise-compared to however far the Shadow Project gets in equivalent time.  Avaricia will be compared to a more rigorous metric of controlled experiment than she is expecting, and that little internal twist that leads her to oversell her results will not, in fact, impress her superiors.

As for the Sevar loyalists, Asmodia is indeed not giving much in the way of orders, which she supposes looks to old-school Asmodeans like 'nothing being done'.  But Asmodia has identified better roads as the actual next key step in Chelish economic progress - because roads enable more surviving children to go into more towns, instead of requiring towns to be higher density until more people get sick; and roads allow professional specialists to travel to more places.  Asmodia is trying to figure out cheaper ways of roadbuilding despite Keltham not having described any such, which is, in fact, a more difficult task than anything the Project or Shadow Project has ever tried before.  And Willa Shilira has her own ideas and her own newly recruited minions taking orders from her; and the two of them have written down in advance their disagreements about methodology; and the ilani are, unlike some Asmodeans, actively helping one another and not just obeying orders.

"You miss one thing, traitor, probably because being a traitor you can't even think of it. I'm not trying to impress my superiors. I am trying to preserve my country. I am not playing for a pat on the head and a neighboring county; if we don't beat Keltham, we all die. 

Also, roads are a stupid project, because Osirion's across the fucking sea, you fucking moron, and unless we win that the long term doesn't matter." This seems like a good place to depart with the rhetorical high ground, so she'll do that.

"Gonna be hard to win that using a slightly more advanced version of our ilani eight-year-old chemistry.  What with Keltham just destroying the entire country if it starts a war, using the actually dangerous knowledge that real ilani have.  The way, you know, Keltham said under truthspell that he would.  You may forget that fact because it's not convenient to you, but I guarantee the Queen and Grand High Priestess think about it very regularly."

Departing in the middle of the argument may mean you can feel like you won, because the other person doesn't get to fire back at you.  It doesn't actually stop somebody from articulating the real counterargument in front of an audience, after you've left and can't argue back.

This sure is an interesting confrontation for the fate of Cheliax!  Maybe Cheliax's soul too!

Obviously, in a case like this, the right thing for a Security to do is stay out of it and just do their jobs, so as to make it a fair contest won by the side with better research methods harass whichever side they think deserves to lose!

Unless you're a Sevar loyalist, of course, in which case you know Sevar wouldn't approve of that sort of thing.

...this does create a certain unfortunate asymmetry, in a Project which now has a number of incredibly unsavory sex offenders extremely reliable Asmodeans on its enormous Security roster.

The Security does not, quite, dare to rape Asmodia, because Sevar is coming back and also because Cheliax is not quite that kind of country.

It does manage to ruin her day and Asmodia can now fairly and evenly say that this event has decreased her research productivity, to Cheliax's detriment.

Afterwards she'll go tell Elias Abarco he's got a disciplinary problem.

Elias Abarco is not, particularly, a neutral observer in the Project's splintering. Sevar doesn't like him, see, so it's to his advantage for there to be someone who does. 

"Oh, good afternoon, heretic and traitor. Welcome to no longer being on a super secret extra special project with the top Security in all of Cheliax assigned. It's not going to get better from here. If we go to war, it'll get worse. Do you want advice, or do you want to strut around highmindedly demanding that Cheliax be a completely different place that works the way the half-extrapolated dath ilan in your head works?"

"I mean, I don't actually want Cheliax to win, but I thought it was still in my interests to make my best possible showing on my side of the Project, while Cheliax inevitably ruins itself because current Asmodeanism is enormously self-destructive.  If you've got advice saying that it's not in my own interests to serve Cheliax even that much, I'd be fascinated."

"Otherwise, it seems to me that my current fork is between 'Abarco does his job' and 'Asmodia goes from here to Maillol being able to honestly say that she did try the one person whose job it was, before bothering her superior, and got told that Abarco was putting his resentments against Sevar ahead of Cheliax's interests and the Queen's orders'.  If you have a different take there, let's hear it."

Asmodia isn't speaking sharply, but she's not bothering to try to hide how angry she is from Abarco's level of Sense Motive.

"That's not what you were told, and I would not recommend lying to Maillol about it. What you are being told is that you are going to need to become more competent if you want to successfully navigate having a power struggle over your Project, and you're going to need to either become vastly more competent or shut up about how you want to see Cheliax destroyed if you want Security to lay off you.

I do not, myself, have an infinite supply of competent staff who are trustworthy Asmodeans and not subject to corruption by all the nonsense around here, and the ones that do are bothered, by a strident little traitor running around saying how much she wants us all to die, and they are right to be bothered, and I'm not going to burn it out of them. I can, and will, keep them in line for a competent Asmodia who is doing the work of Hell, but if you're having tantrums I'm not going to expend further political capital to protect you from the fact those tantrums cost you support that you presently require."

"You know, if I had clarity on that being what my superiors wanted from me I think I'd just do it.  It really ought to be Maillol to make a call like that, with Sevar gone.  But if you on your own recognizance want to tell me that shutting up about certain truths is the price Cheliax needs me to pay for Cheliax's research projects proceeding unhindered by Chelish security, I will do it, because you have the power to hurt Cheliax's interests and I acknowledge that."

"If I do that, are you going to tell your people that Asmodia has been brought to heel, and to lay off the researchers so long as they're doing research and not speaking any heresy in front of them?"

"I could be persuaded to tell them to lay off you personally, if you stop speaking treason and order your little following to stop as well."

And then of course they wouldn't obey her, if the benefit of that order is only Asmodia's personal protection.

"Abarco, all the researchers - on both sections of Project, for that matter - need to be working without Security harassment.  That's what's good for Cheliax.  Selective harrassment is not going to give Cheliax the fair experimental data that Cheliax requires about the relative productivity of different research methods, and if I try to adjust that by asking the Sevar loyalists in Security to harass Avaricia's section exactly equally with the per capita harassment we document ourselves, that's not good for Cheliax either.  If you say we can all stop speaking treason and then you'll bring Security into line for all of us, that works fine.  Giving you that much control doesn't significantly hurt Cheliax in the time it takes Sevar to get back."

"So, firstly, I'm not sure it's true, that the girls will all do their best work if they're treated like precious porcelain dolls. That's how Sevar ran it, but you'll notice that didn't actually work. On most projects, if you fuck up, you get hurt, and if you don't arrange yourself protection, you get hurt, and if you don't have the slightest idea what game you're playing and just run around making enemies, you get hurt, and the people who have any potential at all manage to handle themselves. Sevar didn't come up in an environment where nothing bad happens as long as you behave yourself.

Secondly, you're going to find you have many fewer loyalists, if one of the prices of being a loyalist of yours is having to behave oneself like a fucking paladin.

Third, I don't have the staff under geases. I'm not authorized to kill one as an example to the others, not when we're preparing for a war on a third front. And I don't want to be seen to be siding with the traitors, which problem you'll only mostly solve by ceasing to vocally be a traitor."

"Are you telling me that you won't solve this problem or that you can't?"

"I'm telling you that you're an adult, and you're going to have to solve your problems at least partially yourself, by not painting a target on your back, rather than by running to the nearest grownup to demand that you not be obliged to defend your own interests. Or, you know, get Maillol to order me to babysit you and the girls, which he hasn't."

It's hard, then, to control her anger enough to speak flatly.

"Believe it or not, Abarco, I am somebody who could, almost have been an Asmodean, in the sense that, I've realized after working for Sevar, I don't want to be in command, I want to be second-in-command, I want there to be somebody who gives me orders, and I want to be truly loyal to that person in exchange for a comfortable life.  The part where I just do my fucking job really well and then I actually get protected, I admit, is the un-Asmodean part.  But if Cheliax can't manage to use somebody like me while facing somebody like Keltham, then Cheliax is fucked!  If Cheliax can't manage to stop fireballing itself in the dick for the six and a half rounds required for Sevar to get back, it's not going to fail because Keltham turns a circle of the country into ash, it's going to fail - more embarrassingly!"

"You know, Abarco - no, sir, because I actually am asking you for advice, right now, sir - if you're giving me real advice, it would help for me to know what is the fucking plan, sir, how is Cheliax supposed to win like this?  If even here on the Project we're just, indulging, all the most self-destructive aspects of the human misinterpretation of Asmodeanism, because devils wouldn't do this, sir, they'd cooperate as effectively as ilani would, at least the ones powerful enough to have names - and I don't know how to do that but I'm trying and I don't have any orders telling me to try something else, sir!"

"A very reasonable question.

I don't know the plan. I know what I see, and I can make some inferences from that, but I don't have the whole picture any more than you do. What I see is: we are going to lose if Keltham sets up in Osirion to invent weapons to deploy against us. We can't get there that fast ourselves. I thought we might invade Osirion the day they took him; why give them any more time to be ready? We didn't. One possibility is that it's worth the delay to wrap up in Nidal first, but Nidal's going to be a liability at least for a couple of years and we don't have that long. Another likely-looking possibility is that plans are underway to assassinate and soultrap Keltham in the next week or two. Then we're not fighting Keltham, and we're just trying to conquer the world against the world's inevitable, half-assed efforts to coordinate against that. The third possibility is that in the assessment of our superiors, Keltham won't actually be able to make headway in Osirion and won't stop Cheliax from growing in power.

We aren't going to invent weapons good enough to be decisive in a war that happens in the next few months. I notice that you're not even working on weapons at all, and I do suspect that's because you're a traitor. So the question is which of the projects happening here has the most potential to turn into a valuable contributor to Cheliax's conquest of a Keltham-free, or Keltham-ineffectual, Golarion.

Cheliax is expanding spellsilver production, and I expect they think that Sevar, even if she comes back broken, won't come back too broken to make her little item manufacture aids. Soon we'll control territory we've never held even in our glory days - Nidal - and we'll be rich beyond the imaginings of our ancestors, and our soldiers will be well enough armed and equipped to achieve whatever objectives they're next pointed at. 

From the fact that our superiors did not tell us to run this project like we're Lastwall, or even like we're Osirion, and from the fact Sevar is being tortured horribly for a length of time that people really don't come back from, I think they're not too impressed with the progress made under Sevar's leadership. I can only assume that's why they're entertaining all you unbearable teenagers. And friction like this does give people the chance to demonstrate that they're either competent to operate in Cheliax, or that they aren't; that's worth a couple lost days, under some assumptions about how we win here.

You're not supposed to break, Asmodia. You're supposed to grow up. You're not supposed to put up with self-destructive behavior; you're supposed to punish it. You're not supposed to squabble with Avaricia like a couple of five year olds yelling 'not me, you!', you're supposed to crush her. This is a test, and I think they have those in dath ilan."

Asmodia opens her mouth to demand angrily how much Abarco wants to bet that Sevar doesn't come back whole, because, to break Sevar would be stupid beyond imagining -

- but there's reflexes installed into ilani, to not bet before being sure of their odds, and Asmodia realizes with a vertiginous horror that they might be that stupid.  Because the fourth possibility is that nobody has any plans, and that nothing makes sense in the first place.

Her mouth operates on its own, as Asmodia tries to deal with this sudden inner panic.  "How the fuck am I supposed to crush Avaricia, sir, leaving aside the question of how that serves Cheliax?  Get one of Sevar's loyalists in Security to buy a scroll of Plane Shift and send her to Abaddon?  Because I model that as actually pissing off our superiors, and anything short of that just makes Avaricia angry and escalates a war between Project factions that Cheliax can't win."

Shrug. "Personally if I were trying to crush Avaricia I'd start by seducing her, but that's just me. You're the genius ilani, and it's your test, not mine."